Samsung has moved to cash in on the AI demand that has buyers scooping up more chips than production lines can deliver after reports that it is raising prices by as much as 15% on some of its advanced contract chipmaking.
Filings seen by news outlets also confirm that the South Korean giant has ambitions to continue to build out its Pyeongtaek fab complex. The price hike and expansion plans land as Samsung continues to make its case as an alternative to market-leading rival TSMC, which is already operating at capacity.
Samsung has increased chip prices
According to Reuters, Samsung customers started paying new, higher rates as of July, as demand has kept the firm’s SF4 line at Pyeongtaek fully engaged since late 2025. The line produces logic chips for customers and base dies for Samsung’s own high-bandwidth memory (HBM).
- 10% to 15% increment on the 4-nanometer SF4 process hardest for Chinese and American buyers.
- 5% to 10% increment on the 4-nanometer SF4 process hardest for customers in Taiwan.
- Wafers on the 5-nanometer SF5 line climbed 10% to 15%.
- The older 8-nanometer process rose by close to 10%.
Across the board, Samsung’s Chinese customers were the worst affected by the new revised rates.
TSMC’s win is Samsung’s gain
The Samsung price hike came after a domino that started to fall at rival TSMC, which has maxed out the capacity to meet demand. Every 3-nanometer chip that TSMC has the capacity to produce through 2027 is already paid for. Apple, Nvidia and AMD have already paid for all of TSMC’s 2-nanometer output for 2026.
As of the first quarter of 2026, 70% of all the money flowing into the foundry market went to TSMC, while Samsung is a fair way behind the market leader with about 7%, according to Counterpoint.
However, Samsung has recently gained a lot of prominence among fabless designers being the only other foundry that can currently produce 2-nanometer chips.
“As TSMC faces tight capacity and raises prices, customers are shifting to rivals such as Samsung and Intel, prompting Samsung to raise its prices as well,” Lee Min-hee, an analyst at BNK Investment & Securities, said, explaining the inevitability of the price hike.
Samsung is already doing its best to help Lee land his 2027 profitability projection. Local reports claim the firm has already filed to expand the core of its Pyeongtaek site into a “triple-fab” three-story design.
Samsung’s goal for this expansion is a 1.5X output gain. The filing still needs sign-off from the Gyeonggi provincial governor and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
P5 broke ground in 2022, is due for completion in 2030, and ranks as the largest single semiconductor plant in the world.
A demand curve pulling the whole industry vertical
Memory demand from AI data centers sits behind both moves. Counterpoint projects the global memory market will swell from about 360 trillion won ($258 billion) last year to 1,500 trillion won this year and 2,100 trillion won in 2027.
SK Hynix is planning its new Yongin fabs on the same triple-fab template, a sign the industry is building upward as power, water and land grow harder to secure.
For Samsung, the stakes are sharpened by a foundry unit that industry estimates have kept in the red every year since 2022. Tom’s Hardware reports the division still trails TSMC roughly 11 to 1 by revenue and is running 2-nanometer yields near 55%, below the level needed to make advanced nodes pay.
A $16.5 billion contract to build Tesla’s AI6 processor, signed in July 2025, plus the price increases now flowing through, may be what finally narrows that gap. Samsung already posted a record quarterly operating profit for the second quarter of 2026 on the strength of AI memory, and is separately fast-tracking its Yongin chip cluster to 2029.
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